US INTERVENTION:WITH A boldness that the world had begun to believe he lacked, US president Barack Obama has gone for broke.
The United States wants Col Muammar Gadafy’s head and will not rest until he is deposed, with regime change in Libya. Moreover, it will fight to get it.
Mr Obama spent weeks pondering, prevaricating and posturing, infuriating Britain and France, arch advocates of military intervention.
But eventually the prospect of the US standing idly by as Col Gadafy crushed Libya’s would-be democratic revolutionaries and wreaked his revenge on the strategic rebel stronghold of Benghazi was too much to bear.
The US looks set to intervene to stop him. Furthermore, there would be no half measures. All steps short of boots on the ground, as the US under-secretary of state William Burns put it yesterday are now urgently contemplated, with a view to immediate implementation.
That means possible, imminent air strikes as well as an air exclusion zone. It means direct head-on combat with Libya’s air force, if it chooses to fight. Moreover, if things do not go well it may mean escalation beyond all that is envisaged now. Who knows when it will stop?
The immediate impact may be to stop Col Gadafy’s advance on Benghazi in its tracks. If that happens, the revolution will have been salvaged, albeit at the very last moment. Whether it can endure is another matter entirely.
The US and its European and Arab allies will hope that the Libyan leader, facing the prospect of overwhelming, punitive force, will quickly back down, observe the UN demand for a ceasefire and even agree to negotiations. But to be sure of saving Benghazi, a no-fly zone will not be enough. It is likely allied air strikes on Col Gadafy’s heavy armour and artillery will be required, and possibly also attacks directed at him personally, as Ronald Reagan attempted in 1986.
A sudden, bloody nose may check the Gadafy loyalist advance. and this could be about to happen. Moreover it is arguable that those elements of the Libyan army and security forces that have so far remained loyal could desert the Libyan leader in the event of such an intervention.
The longer-term impact of a US move is immeasurable. But disaster is certainly one possible outcome. If the fighting is prolonged, if Col Gadafy does not quit and run, if his more able sons take up his cause, if the intervention makes things worse not better for ordinary people (as in Iraq), if there is no clear-cut victor but ongoing low-level conflict and resistance (as in Afghanistan), then Arab opinion will turn against the westerners once more.
However, a reasonable prospect of success exists. If the rebels prove capable of establishing a government to assume control of Libya, and not just the rebellious east, then Mr Obama’s gamble could pay off.
It will be hailed as an improbable triumph for, among others, British prime minister David Cameron. He took a harder line than most earlier on. If Col Gadafy is defeated reformers in Bahrain and elsewhere will be heartened.
Mr Obama and Mr Cameron are looking for another Kosovo or Kuwait, not another Iraq. But last night politics gave way to armed might. They cannot control the outcome; now they can only wait and hope they were right.– (Guardian service)